2015-2016 University of Rochester Application Thread

Applying to Med School? Get In Or Your Money Back
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Has anyone heard back recently?
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Sa.cl said:
Congratulations!! Did you get a phone call or a letter?
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Thanks! I got a phone call and an e-mail notification around the same time in the early afternoon; apparently all the official deets are in the snail-mail letter but they give you a heads up if it's on the way :)
 
Accepted on monday. Received a phone call first and email afterwards. Interviewed end of January. Wasn't expecting hearing back so soon. Was told it would take 6-8 weeks from my interview, but not complaining. Hang in there!
 
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Can any current/former students comment on the class schedule and course load? I took another look at the class schedule and was a little intimidated that the typical day regularly goes from 8-4. This seems like a lot of material to digest, especially when Rochester doesn't record lectures (I plan on going to class, but it would be nice to reference material later when studying).

-Do current/former students feel that all this class time was necessary/valuable or was the curriculum "bloated?"

-Also, with this much class time, did you have adequate time to study on your own and do extracurricular activities during the week?
 
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Congratulations to everyone on your acceptances, by the way. We're glad to have you!

ticktock5051 said:
Can any current/former students comment on the class schedule and course load? I took another look at the class schedule and was a little intimidated that the typical day regularly goes from 8-4. This seems like a lot of material to digest, especially when Rochester doesn't record lectures (I plan on going to class, but it would be nice to reference material later when studying).

-Do current/former students feel that all this class time was necessary/valuable or was the curriculum "bloated?"

-Also, with this much class time, did you have adequate time to study on your own and do extracurricular activities during the week?
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I'm a fourth year, so my perspective may be different than current first and second years. Hopefully this answers your questions:



I found the days during the basic science years to be very manageable. Most days were broken up with PBL, anatomy lab or histology lab. Many afternoons were spent with SPs or at our primary care clinic sites. Days with 8 solid hours of lecture were uncommon. Course facilitators know students get bored and make an continued effort to avoid putting students to sleep. Many lectures are not required. Although attendance is encouraged out of respect for lecturers, there are students who routinely skip 8 and 9 am classes.

I thought class was mostly useful and not bloated, though I probably skipped one or two lectures a week. Some courses were better organized than others. Our anatomy, biochemistry, and neurology/psychiatry modules were particularly well received. Some lectures are repetitive or unhelpful. And sometimes, I just didn't appreciate the applications of the lecture material. The mechanism of action of the ADAMTS13 enzyme can seem like trivia until you have a patient with TTP. I did feel that the curriculum focused more on primary care during our first two years, with a relative lack of exposure to surgery and surgical subspecialties like Ophtho and ENT.

I do wish we recorded lectures, but each course compiles a syllabus of notes and presentations. Exam material for the basic sciences are almost entirely drawn from this material. Personally, much (most?) of what I've retained throughout medical school is the reading I've done on my own time. There was generally enough time to study--but the amount of material means you should budget time to review regularly because you can't really get away with procrastinating too much.

I felt there was plenty of time for life outside school during my weekdays and weekends. To be honest, first and second year weren't so bad. There was time for volunteering, dating, traveling, and taking up new hobbies. Classmates of mine were running marathons, fielding teams for kickball and ultimate frisbee, learning swing dance, hitting up festivals, and organizing ski trips.



One thing I'll add: I think your clinical years will probably impact your career plans more than your first two years, so I'd recommend you carefully weigh the clinical experience you'll be getting at the schools you're looking at.
 
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BobRoss said:
Congratulations to everyone on your acceptances, by the way. We're glad to have you!

One thing I'll add: I think your clinical years will probably impact your career plans more than your first two years, so I'd recommend you carefully weigh the clinical experience you'll be getting at the schools you're looking at.
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Could you comment a little bit about the clinical experience at Rochester? do you think they adequately prepare you for residency? Thank you!
 
Waitlisted yesterday. Should I just give up? If the odds of getting an acceptance from the waitlist are anything like last year that seems like the wiser option....
 
Does anyone know how often the committee meets or when the committee meets next?
 
Hpflftrdr said:
Could you comment a little bit about the clinical experience at Rochester? do you think they adequately prepare you for residency? Thank you!
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I think we’re adequately prepared. Of course, 3rd and 4th years are very strongly dependent on self-motivation. You get out what you put in.

Our Family Medicine rotation is spread out during the first two years, freeing up some extra time for electives during 3rd year. Gives extra time to explore interests. Other clerkships happen 3rd year, with EM in 4th year unless desired earlier. Scheduling is fairly flexible. Students lottery into location and service options at the start of each clerkship. We have a pretty comprehensive range of specialties. For surgery, for example, you can choose from trauma, transplant, colorectal, cardiac, thoracic, peds, plastics, ortho, neurosurg, urology, ENT, vascular, and probably others I’m forgetting. You could do worse. There are students at other institutions who struggle to get their foot in the door because their schools lack subspecialties.

Students generally rate Medicine and Neurology highest. The clerkships are well organized. Residents and attendings are dedicated to teaching and really incorporate students into teams. Makes for great learning and makes you feel involved. I’ve been on service with a lot of the medicine subspecialties and can say the same for all of them.

People don’t quite love our Psych, OB, or Surgery rotations as much. These departments are still decent and people still choose to go into these specialties each year. ECT and the Psych ED were highlights for me. Gyn Onc was great, and the OB clerkship director is awesome. But some residents and attendings aren’t as welcoming, and sometimes your efforts don’t seem as relevant. Sub-Is in surgical subspecialties also need to do a sub-I in medicine or gen surg (may be the case elsewhere too), which can be inconvenient if you’re already doing aways. In recent years, several students have gone unmatched in surgical subspecialties, and several residents have left our surgical programs.

A few other highlights:

Our medical center has really grown in the last few years. Our cancer center is pretty new and has beautiful spaces for hematology, oncology, rad onc, the breast cancer clinic, urology and ENT. We opened a state-of-the-art children’s hospital less than a year ago. We’ve acquired a couple smaller hospitals while I’ve been here too.

It’s easy to find relevant research to explore interests and strengthen your residency application. There’s a surprisingly broad spread of research here, and PIs are uniformly approachable. We were recently designated a CFAR, and have a lot of vaccine development going on. Our neuroscience and cardiology research is particularly strong, but we also have the usual cool things like stem cell therapies, gene therapy, and 3D-printed tissue engineering. The new Clinical and Translational Science Institute is pretty helpful for data mining and statistical consults.

Our match lists for the past several years should be available. We generally match pretty well.

This is all my take on things, but hopefully this is useful. Most important is finding a place where you fit. Best of luck!
 
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Does anyone know if there's a FB group for accepted students yet?
 
Does anyone know when Rochester finishes interviewing? Any idea when decisions go out for mid-February interview?
 
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I am an accepted applicant who already submitted a deposit but have decided not to attend URoch for medical school. How do I withdraw and notify admissions? Email?
 
salsa112230 said:
I am an accepted applicant who already submitted a deposit but have decided not to attend URoch for medical school. How do I withdraw and notify admissions? Email?
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Hey, I was in the same position as you. I sent an email. In this email, I showed appreciation and thanked URoch for the opportunity. Then, I stated the fact that I will no longer be attending URoch. It was a very short/concise email. Also, I did receive my refund.
 
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Free411 said:
Hey, I was in the same position as you. I sent an email. In this email, I showed appreciation and thanked URoch for the opportunity. Then, I stated the fact that I will no longer be attending URoch. It was a very short/concise email. Also, I did receive my refund.
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Thank you!
 
Got the wait list email as well. Any insight on how much movement they generally see?
 
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Eb123 said:
Got the wait list email as well. Any insight on how much movement they generally see?
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Last year I think they had 2 get off the waitlist. I interviewed back in September and was wait listed as well, but they told me they were going to try and get much more movement this year. Not sure if that's changed in the last 6 months... But I'm sure hoping its the same!


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
 
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Waitlisted as well. I got the same impression from them when I was there in February that the process was a little different this year and that there would probably more movement off the waitlist than there has been in the past.
 
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Accepted!!! Got the call earlier this afternoon. Interviewed mid-February.
 
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In previous years they sent out High Priority Waitlist emails at the beginning of April, has anyone received it? I'm trying to figure out if I still have a shot or if I should give up hope
 
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Storytime said:
In previous years they sent out High Priority Waitlist emails at the beginning of April, has anyone received it? I'm trying to figure out if I still have a shot or if I should give up hope
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i personally haven't received anything
 
BobRoss said:
I think we’re adequately prepared. Of course, 3rd and 4th years are very strongly dependent on self-motivation. You get out what you put in.

Our Family Medicine rotation is spread out during the first two years, freeing up some extra time for electives during 3rd year. Gives extra time to explore interests. Other clerkships happen 3rd year, with EM in 4th year unless desired earlier. Scheduling is fairly flexible. Students lottery into location and service options at the start of each clerkship. We have a pretty comprehensive range of specialties. For surgery, for example, you can choose from trauma, transplant, colorectal, cardiac, thoracic, peds, plastics, ortho, neurosurg, urology, ENT, vascular, and probably others I’m forgetting. You could do worse. There are students at other institutions who struggle to get their foot in the door because their schools lack subspecialties.

Students generally rate Medicine and Neurology highest. The clerkships are well organized. Residents and attendings are dedicated to teaching and really incorporate students into teams. Makes for great learning and makes you feel involved. I’ve been on service with a lot of the medicine subspecialties and can say the same for all of them.

People don’t quite love our Psych, OB, or Surgery rotations as much. These departments are still decent and people still choose to go into these specialties each year. ECT and the Psych ED were highlights for me. Gyn Onc was great, and the OB clerkship director is awesome. But some residents and attendings aren’t as welcoming, and sometimes your efforts don’t seem as relevant. Sub-Is in surgical subspecialties also need to do a sub-I in medicine or gen surg (may be the case elsewhere too), which can be inconvenient if you’re already doing aways. In recent years, several students have gone unmatched in surgical subspecialties, and several residents have left our surgical programs.

A few other highlights:

Our medical center has really grown in the last few years. Our cancer center is pretty new and has beautiful spaces for hematology, oncology, rad onc, the breast cancer clinic, urology and ENT. We opened a state-of-the-art children’s hospital less than a year ago. We’ve acquired a couple smaller hospitals while I’ve been here too.

It’s easy to find relevant research to explore interests and strengthen your residency application. There’s a surprisingly broad spread of research here, and PIs are uniformly approachable. We were recently designated a CFAR, and have a lot of vaccine development going on. Our neuroscience and cardiology research is particularly strong, but we also have the usual cool things like stem cell therapies, gene therapy, and 3D-printed tissue engineering. The new Clinical and Translational Science Institute is pretty helpful for data mining and statistical consults.

Our match lists for the past several years should be available. We generally match pretty well.

This is all my take on things, but hopefully this is useful. Most important is finding a place where you fit. Best of luck!
Click to expand...

How is the social atmosphere at Rochester? Are students typically in their own cliques or is everyone friendly with each other? Also, are there people who are reserved/introverted (just wondering as a fellow introvert lol)?
 
Can anyone post a link for the Facebook page for the class of 2020? I can't seem to find it through search.
 
Storytime said:
In previous years they sent out High Priority Waitlist emails at the beginning of April, has anyone received it? I'm trying to figure out if I still have a shot or if I should give up hope
Click to expand...
was unaware they have a high priority waitlist here. is that actually true?
 
Richard_Rooster said:
was unaware they have a high priority waitlist here. is that actually true?
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In previous years there was a HPWL, but according to the last year forum someone called and confirmed there was not a HPWL for the 2014-2015 cycle. Not sure about this year though
 
Does U of R offer merit scholarships/if so, when are they typically released?
 
Did anyone on here go to revisit weekend? Was there a large number of people there?
 
couts said:
Second look is happening this coming weekend! 4/15-16
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Very interesting. It looks like the MD/PhD revisit weekend was this past weekend. I guess they had the MD/PhD and regular MD revisit weekends separately!
 
mstpee said:
How is the social atmosphere at Rochester? Are students typically in their own cliques or is everyone friendly with each other? Also, are there people who are reserved/introverted (just wondering as a fellow introvert lol)?
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I think you'll be fine.

I'd consider myself introverted but I came here because I thought I'd mesh well with the people. I found a friend group and things turned out just fine. I think cliques are a normal part of any large class, but I think people get involved if they want to be. In general, I think we have a well-deserved reputation for being warmer and more touchy-feely, with fewer gunners (though you get them everywhere). I like to spend a lot of time by myself, but went to my share of class events and didn't feel excluded.
 
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Any news on when the waitlist is going to start moving????? I'm going a bit crazy, no big deal.
 
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Just got in off the wait list today. There's still hope!
 
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congrats! glad to see it started moving and theyre not waiting for overflow candidates
 
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